Through the years many digital marketing specialists have been debating about the relevance of email marketing as an effective strategy in the modern era; keeping in mind the increase of popularity in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other ones, the scenario looks kind of obvious, but is it really?
Let?s begin by defining what email marketing and social networks really are:
Email Marketing
It focuses on sending direct messages to the mail inbox of our contact list in order to gain new clients, build up relationships with current ones, establish loyalty, interact with the customers we already have, increase sales, build trust and other objectives.
The main purpose of this digital marketing strategy is to promote a business?s products or services, commonly by sending emails (as we mention previously) to communicate, remind or make your customers aware of your latest items, offers and discounts you might have in your online web.
We must keep in mind that email marketing not only engages our audience after a purchase by a client is made, but also it helps by driving traffic to our blog, website, app or anywhere else we would like our target to visit, so it?s important to create relevant content to send.
Social Networks
It refers to an online platform (via web or through mobile apps) where it?s users can connect to other people (acquaintances, friends, partners, coworkers, family, etc.) and maintain interpersonal relationships through it.
Social networks allow us to share information, photos, videos, gifs and different content with people who have similar interests to ours or a variant kind of theirs. By creating a personal or business account we can start doing it.
Due to every business being different (because of their target and it?s interests) there is not a single prototype or list of steps to follow in order to get a good marketing strategy that works in every single company, as we mention, the method of use depends on multiple fixed and variable factors. The same story with the creation of social networks, not all companies and brands need to be part of every single existing social network. It is always better to manage only the accounts that generate traffic (and works good with the product or service we offer) than waste our time trying to improve the interaction on a social network that is just not the appropriate one for our product.
Now that we know both meanings we can talk about the strategies, tools and advices that will help us to improve our relationship with our audience.
Not the Same
What would you think if I told you that it is not the same to have 1000 customers on your subscriptions list than 1000 followers on social networks?
As we mention, when someone decides to subscribe to a newsletter, weekly news, etc. this person is showing the interest of making a commitment with the brand you are managing. Would you like to receive emails of England sport news when you are living in Brazil and not being really into that? I don’t think so, that?s why having customers that decide on their own to subscribe to what we offer is really a big deal.
The fact of having someone that voluntarily registers him or herself in a newsletter in order to get extra information about a product or service we are offering is what gives us an important overview of our position in the market! Not every person who visits our website or a social network of the brand does that, just only the ones who are truly interested in it.
We must keep in mind that the level of loyalty and commitment of a social network follower is lower than a newsletter subscription one, for example if you follow two hundred accounts (personal and business ones) on Instagram, do you see every single post and story they upload? to this we must add that the content we shared via networks does not reach the 100% of our followers when we are trying organic posts or do you think that if you have a thousand of followers they all expect and wait for what we are going to post? of course they don?t and that?s one of the main reasons why integrating both (email marketing and social networks) is not only important but also necessary.
Focusing on Business
Now, if you own a company that has a high active presence in social media platforms and you are not taking advantage of the commitment and dialogue that you are generating there with your audience, it is time for you to open your eyes and realize that you are missing some important opportunities to grow.
Having different but useful social network accounts help brands to increase their recognition, promote brand loyalty, generate leads and reinforce their love mark. It also helps companies to be found in different search engines or digital platforms by hashtags or because the generation of shareable content followed by viralizations and that?s exactly the type of content we must take advantage of by using it in our emails.
How to do it?
Some ways to integrate both email marketing and social networks is by taking some of the best high traffic posts we had made and link them to the newsletters we are going to send so we can invite people of our contact list to check what is happening in the web, an easy but efficient way to select those is with the KPIS that platforms offer to the manager.
Another one that works well with Instagram posts is selecting some of the most liked images or videos that generated a high level of interaction with users so we can connect with our target interests and contribute to improving our numbers of ?leads?.
I?d like to mention that a lead is a person who shows interest in our products or services, a potential customer, whom we are interested in converting through the conversion funnel, which is known as AIDA (awareness, interest, desire and action).
Awareness: How to make our target notice our brand? Think about the strategy that help us the most to reach our objective,
Interest: Think about what would make our target start focusing on our product, service or whatever we offer. In this part of our conversion funnel people might look for searching more information about what we offer on their own.
Desire: Now the target wants to finish the action we plan (subscribe, buy, try, etc.) after we connect with them emotionally and develop brand personality and style.
Action: The target did what we want (commonly buy our product or service). Some marketers relate this step with the use of a CTA to complete the conversion funnel.
It is imperative to point out that when it comes to social networks, you ought to keep the information updated, doing it weekly it?s a nice start to doing it since the news cycle changes briefly. What is relevant or eye-catching now may not be of interest next week or even tomorrow.
What about the Value Proposition?
Ask yourself what is the one thing that you offer to your customers that other companies can?t provide. If you want to go farther, think about the only thing that you offer on your social platforms, the one that makes your followers stay there and stay loyal to your brand.
Now that you know what your value proposition is, take advantage of it! Proclaim it, one of the most effective strategies while integrating email marketing is emphasizing the good things you have to offer to your customers, they will be glad to know what those are.
To Keep in Mind
We must consider taking occasional breaks from the regular email templates, topics and marketing content we usually use. Telling our customers how much we appreciate them, asking them how we can improve our service or just saying hello is a good way to show our clients how important they are! By doing that the brand not only shows that the users experience and opinions matters, but also, it?s a good opportunity to convert consumers into prosumers.
Something that is extremely important is that our email template contains a CTA (call to action), which is a marketing term for any method (generally a button) designed to prompt an instant response or encourage our target to do something we previously thought, analyze and want them to do.
Every platform and social networks are different and what users of them expect too. What is published on a blog is often shared on Facebook as well without thinking about whether the audience we are trying to communicate to is not the same that the blog has. Before start doing something like we mention before, be concerned that the content you are going to share must be adapted to the style of each platform, remember that what works on Facebook may not work on Instagram, and what works on Instagram may not work on Twitter.
Remember that the idea is not to make a comparison of what does its work better, is to integrate them to improve the performance and remembrance of our brand in the mind of the consumers. Both big companies (as Netflix) and small ones (as Tinkuy) started to integrate their social networks to email marketing and enjoyed the results, so what are you waiting for to put into practice the advices?
